Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.

Thanks to Will Richardson and What you need to read this Week, this article in The New York Times caught my attention. I have read Sherry Turkle’s book “Alone Together”, and I think I will order her new book “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age”.

Of course, we can find empathic conversations today, but the trend line is clear. It’s not only that we turn away from talking face to face to chat online. It’s that we don’t allow these conversations to happen in the first place because we keep our phones in the landscape.

In our hearts, we know this, and now research is catching up with our intuitions. We face a significant choice. It is not about giving up our phones but about using them with greater intention. Conversation is there for us to reclaim. For the failing connections of our digital world, it is the talking cure.

This is our moment to acknowledge the unintended consequences of the technologies to which we are vulnerable, but also to respect the resilience that has always been ours. We have time to make corrections and remember who we are — creatures of history, of deep psychology, of complex relationships, of conversations, artless, risky and face to face.

There are a lot of useful points to discuss in class here. How about having you students read this article and write a blog post about how this compares to their own relationsships with family and friends. And what about school work and retention? These points are certainly useful arguments in the discussions were are having in Norway about using mobile phone hotels during class. Do we need our mobile phones during class? Why, why not?

Sherry Turkle is a professor in the program in Science, Technology and Society at M.I.T. and the author, most recently, of “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age,” from which this essay is adapted. Source: The New York Times.